a bleeding purple utah jazz blog

Bits from Randy Rigby Interview, 9/12

For reasons unknown to me, Randy Rigby decided to give this week’s interview in the character of Chris Traeger (see Footnote 1 if you’ve never watched “Parks and Recreation”).

** One of the important moves for us this summer was, literally, the acquisition of both the radio stations and putting together these very good, I, I think the best in, in, in this marketplace of sports talent that, so we have a strong signal to talk sports, and then the right people and the right system to really talk sports.

On what P3 does:** They have, and they have been, longitudinal data on each of these players of, of how they’re progressing and where they started and then where they’re at. Case in point, you’ll see them, they have one area where they’re actually measuring, a player will actually jump down onto a force plate and then you see them actu–as if they are coming down from catching a rebound and then you see them jump back. Then you’ll have them jump back up.

And he will literally be measuring if they’re jumping evenly on both, both feet and both legs, and then where the power and force is coming, if it’s coming from both legs or just one, with the idea of it that if you’re just using one leg more than the other, you’re going to overuse that leg.

** They then work with lateral movements with players and how they’re improving their lateral mobility. They’re then working with leg, upper body strength training and rebounding and those are just a few of the things, one of them they’re taking the 24-25-lbs. kind of flat basketball, kinda looks like, and would literally then have them throwing that up onto the ceiling and trying to, again, just building their upper body and their core of, of strengthening it, and then we’ll measure that kind of strength as well.

** They’re also then measuring now their mind, and how the player will literally be engaged in, a, attention while they’re actually, like, on a court or playing a game. And then when the game stops, if they have the ability to let their mind also rest, so that kind of like a [?], like a, like a engine of a mach–of a car, that when you go up to a place and you want to idle, your mind is idling instead of just constantly running. ‘Cause if you’re going to constantly run, that thing’s just gonna, again, be, wear itself out.

On Scott Layden moving from Jazz assistant coach to Spurs assistant general manager:** If this was going to be a move that Scott felt would be bettering his career and his opportunities, we were in support of it. If he felt that it was more going to be a lateral move, we wanted Scott to be here.

** [Was Layden considered for the Jazz GM job?] That was, that was one that was kind of just a, a private discussion that we kind of had, and for numerous reasons, one that we just kind of feel is, is, is, would, would rather not, rather not comment on. We’ve, we looked at a number of candidates, we talked about a number of candidates, including Scott, but, but we, you know, we made one offer though, and, and one offer only, and that was to Dennis Lindsey.

On what Brad Jones brings to the Jazz:** For numerous years, he was literally also coaching a D-League team, and we had a number of our players going down there.